Summary Of The Right To Fail By William Zinsser

Everybody makes mistakes. Failure can be a motivation, for it drives you to have a bigger passion for your desired goal. Success and failure have a relationship in which you can learn from your mistakes but later succeed.

I failed to reach the top of the rock climbing wall on the playground, and as a result, I have strived even harder to reach the peak of success in everything I do. Instead of becoming discouraged and disappointed in myself, I found a way to improve myself for my next challenge. Learning from my mistakes has molded me into an improved person while giving me the motivation to keep pushing forward. Failure has taught me the importance of learning from your errors and trying again, no matter how difficult it may be. Without lessons like these, I would not be the motivated, independent person that I am today. I will continue to fail and try again until I achieve my goal of reaching the

When I look at the word failure I didn’t see success. But that slowly changed as I read the book What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain Chapter four. Bain, for me and I’m sure many other, have changed our view point on failure being a bad thing. He instead expressed failure as an “opportunity to learn something.” (121) As infants we grow and develop, we learn to walk by falling down a couple hundred times, and we learn to speak by babbling. By trying to walk, and trying to talk, we may fail at first. As an infant, you cannot give up when you are face to face with failure. You must get up and try again to learn. In the book, What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain he uses people’s experiences and research to explain why failure is an opportunity to learn something new, rather than seeing failure as something bad. He asserts “people who become highly creative and productive learn to acknowledge failures, even to embrace them, and to explore and learn from them.” (100) Failure is important. If we did not get up and try again as infants, we would not be where we are today.

Failure can be a very difficult thing to cope with. It can be something that makes you or breaks you. I have learned that failure is what defines a person; it shows your motivation to bounce back when things get rough. I have learned from my failure instead of dwelling on it and making myself weaker.

The article “To Err Is Wrong” by Roger Von Oech, “In Praise of the F Word” by Mary Shelly, and “Zero” by Paul Logan are inspirational to many people because it shows them that failure is not a roadblock and you can learn from your mistakes. Failure plays a significant role as a motivational tool, direction, and strength to help students to be successful in the class and in the future. The word failure has been shown in several cases to cause motivation. One of the cases is in the article “ The Praise Of The Word” when Mary Sherry told her son that his teacher was going to “flunk” him (Sherry98) .

When most people (here in the US or anywhere else in the world) hear or talk about the United States, a common theme is living the “America Dream”. The “American Dream” is the idea that children will have a higher standard of living than their parents and in 1940, 92 percent of them did. But by 1980 that number decreased to 50 percent, in terms of absolute mobility. The term “successful” is a universal term and applies different for every single individual because everyone has different levels of success, some are higher then others and there can be some barriers in the way. There are many stories and evidence that have proven this theme but in the fine details there are many other things that come into play when it comes to becoming “successful”.

In addition, the willingness to learn through failure can help to reach the desired destiny. Nearly everybody fears failing, because it has been associated with all sorts of negativity. Although an optimistic look on the other side of tripping or falling down in life can make someone to be successful in

Ana Montes ENGL 0190 WP #3 Mrs. Ziegel Have you ever failed at something in your life? William Zinsser’s essay “The Right to Fail” in the Discovering Communities The Reading/Writing Connection 6th

Failure is widely viewed as negative. While this portrayal of failure is justified, it does not tell the whole story. Failure is a learning experience because it explains the errors made, and then the person figures out how to fix the mistakes. The way individuals respond to the failure is a great way to evaluate his/her character. There

In the story “The Right to Fail”, author William Zinsser, speaks about the necessity of failing in order to succeed. He argues about America is not granting its citizens the right to fail, someone who stays at home is more of a failure than the dropout kid, success can be dangerous, finally the younger generation understand failure better. Zinsser uses Thomas P.F Hoving and Fred Zinnemann who both became successful people to support his argument.

The central message of Being Wrong, by Kathryn Schulz, is that although nobody likes being wrong, it is a central part of our existence and we should learn how to accept it and make the most of it. While I do agree with Schulz that being wrong is a necessary function to learn, recognizing this fact and acting with the idea in mind that failure is acceptable will deeply hamper your chances of succeeding. Nowadays, it seems to be fashionable to talk about how acceptable failure is. We are told that life is one big experiment, Carpe Diem, do what makes you happy. This is a recipe for certain failure. It is imperative to view failure as unacceptable, and continue striving for perfection; if you are satisfied with failure, you will never succeed.

Though I do believe that there are new ways to get success, I disagree when Zinsser says that we are rewriting old standards. I believe that youth of today is lazy. They’ve experienced too much success and not enough failure. We have more socialites (people famous for being famous) than ever before in history. People like Kylie Jenner and Paris Hilton do nothing except post on instagram, twitter, or snapchat; leech off of their parents’ success; get richer; then make business moves by creating their own makeup lines.The fact that these types of people could launch multi-million dollar deals, fail, and then not have to try to be successful again is sickening. What’s even more sickening is that more people are becoming successful by following these examples. What’s worst of all is that these are the people, young people look up go and try to be like. Thy try to live get-rich-quick lives, fail, and then are never able to recover. This is why we must begin to garner more people who failed, then succeeded than those who succeed and continue to

In the article, The Right to Fail, the main focus is that failing is acceptable and you do not always have to be perfect. Always set your goals high but be accepting of something that is less. “But what if we fail?’... what they should say is don't be afraid to fail!’ failure isn't fatal.” (Page 1, Paragraph 3-4). According to the author, most people are so afraid to fail in life because of their peers and what people will think of them. Furthermore, the author says that you shouldn't be afraid to fail because that means you're taking risks and trying new things. Moreover, people make who they are as a person and if you fail occasionally that only makes you better as a person. “History is strewn with eminent dropouts, ‘loners’ who followed their own trail, not worried about its twists and turns, because they had faith in their own sense of direction.” (Page 1, Paragraph 4). People who have failed at one point in life are determined and hard workers, they know what they have to do to get back on the road to success. Success is not always the best thing, so much success and not enough failures can lead to your downfall. “Success can be dangerous - you feel you know it all. I've learned a great deal from my failures.” (Page 2, Paragraph 8). When you are so successful you feel invincible. Invincibility eventually leads to an ultimate defeat, failure is needed to be able to grow. To the contrary, Raisin in the Sun has a valid point. “You got a nice wife a fine boy and - a job, Mama, a job? I open and close car doors all day long. I drive a man around in his limousine and say yes sir, no sir, very good sir, should I take the drive, sir? Mama that ain't no job that ain't nothing at all.”(Page 1, Paragraph 4-5). Yet again, the right to fail yet again disprove that. “Writers, play writers, painters, composers work in the expectation of

Failure is something that we cannot go through life without experiencing. The best thing about failure is that failure can be used as a great learning experience to improve upon things in our lives and career. Using failure as a learning tool is dependent upon the person and how they view it as well as how they use it. Failure is a matter of perspective and the lessons in failure are important aspects towards growth and development. If we did not experience failure there wouldn’t be opportunities for learning. Failure can teach us about ourselves as well as provide an understanding for our

Mistakes are a part of life. Everyone fails at some point in there life. In the short video “Fall Forward” spoken by Denzel Washington, it explains what we learn from our elders. Younger generations have learned from their parents, grandparents, teachers, siblings and many more people that failing and pushing past is something everyone has to do. You just have to push past it and try again. If you don’t try again you may never know what could have happened.